IN RESEARCHING the early activities of what was to become Medallic Art Company in preparation for a history of the company, and the two Weil Brothers – Henri and Felix – one fact became quite evident. The pair continued to do what they had done for as long as they had been in New York City. They served at the direction of sculptors.
The Weils acquired art training in different ways. Henri had apprenticed to sculptor George Wagner, married to their sister, and served as his assistant for four years. Later Felix was also apprenticed to his brother-in-law as well. Each morning their job was to unwrap the clay model their brother-in-law was working on. At the end of the day they would moisten the clay and wrap the clay for the night.
Odd jobs around the studio occupied their daytime activities. It was impossible, however, to work for a sculptor and not observe the techniques and learn the ability to model the clay into final form. Henri was assigned small parts to model, which would be applied to a larger model. Later Felix did the same, perhaps inspiring him to become a sculptor. He enrolled at New York’s Cooper Union for nighttime studies.
At Cooper Union the pair met other aspiring sculptors, Felix’s fellow students. Not only did these people become close friends to the Weil brothers, these same artists were to gain fame later in life. While sculptors were competitors for art commissions, they tended to congregate in New York City, center of American business at the turn of the 20th century.
After leaving the Wagner studio Henri worked for a Belgian sculptor creating statuary for the 1892-93 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. When he returned to New York he is employed by a sculptural firm preparing all the decorative work for the Waldorf Hotel.
Felix struck out on his own, left his brother-in-law and went to work for sculptor Alex Doyle, who had a commission for a Yorktown monument. After a brief period at Cooper Union, Felix also studied at night at the National Academy of Design. As work at Doyle’s studio declines he applied to Philip Martiny, who also had commissions for work at the Columbian Expo. He is sent to Chicago with Martiny‘s models, ultimately to work in the same building with his brother, each for a different sculptor.
Following a bicycle accident in Chicago, Felix spends a year in Mexico City, then returns to New York City to form a sculpture business with Jules Edouard Roiné, a partnership, Roiné & Weil to last for a decade.
Henri joins the Deitsch Brothers, ladies handbag manufacturers, as a sculptor for the fine decorative silverwork attached to their handbags, then in fashion. As often happens, fashions change neglecting the need for such decoration. Meanwhile Henri, at his employers’ insistence, imported the first Janvier pantograph to America.
To save his job, Henri suggested what he knew best: solicit work from sculptors for work for the new Janvier. Success was slow at first, but sculptors started bringing their models to Henri to cut dies to strike medals. This work from sculptors lead to the beginning of Medallic Art Company.
What I have learned was the procedure of how the Weils obtained work after they acquired ownership of the Janvier and the company name. The artists brought the work to the Weils. They knew the Weils as friends, and as part of the sculptural community in New York City.
The sculptors drove the business. This was to continue for two decades. The Weils were serving in a capacity they knew well, and did well. They could take a sculptor’s bas-relief model or models and do whatever the artist wanted, cast a galvano metal relief, or make the dies and have medals struck. The Weils had taken their talents from sculptors’ assistants to furnishing a finished sculptural product at the highest level of sculptural accomplishment.
Below is a list of 63 sculptors for whom the Weils did work – galvano casts or die-struck medals — that first two decades of the firm. Later, after the Weils had hired Clyde Curlee Trees in 1919, he compiled a list of sculptors in 1927 who could be added to this list, prospects for new work for the Weils’ talents. Both lists follow.
Artists of MACO Medals
First Two Decades
Robert Ingersoll Aitken (1878-1949)
Evelyn Longman Batchelder (1874-1954)
Chester Beach (1881-1956)
Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941)
John Joseph Boyle (1852-1917)
Victor David Brenner (1871-1924)
George Thomas Brewster (1862-1943)
Richard Edwin Brooks (1865-1919)
Roger Noble Burnham (1876-1962)
Henry Kirke Bush-Brown (1857-1935)
Charles Calverley (1833-1914)
Pierre J. Cheron or Pierrez Cheron (?)
Gail Sherman Corbett (1871-1952)
Russell Gerry Crook (1869-1955)
Leonard Crunelle (1872-1944)
Ulysses S.J. Dunbar (1862-1927)
Ulric Ellerhussen (1879-1957)
Paul Fjelde (1892-1987)
John Flanagan (1865-1952)
James Earle Fraser (1876-1953)
Laura Gadin Fraser (1889-1966)
Daniel Chester French (1850-1931)
Johanes Sophus Gelert (1852-1923)
Louis Albert Gudebrod (1872-1961)
Ernest Eimer Hannan (1875-1945)
Jonathan Scott Hartley (1845-1912)
Eli Harvey (1860-1957)
Ernest Bruce Haswell (1889-1965)
Henry Hering (1874-1949)
Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973)
John Milton Jehu (fl 1912-13)
Jeno Juszko (1880-1954)
Thomas Hudson Jones (1892-1969)
Gozo Kawamura (1886-1950)
Charles Keck (1875-1951)
Ernest Wise Keyser (1876-1959)
Isidore Konti (1862-1938)
H. Augustus Lukeman (1871-1935)
Edward McCartan (1879-1947)
R. Tait McKenzie (1867-1938)
Herman Atkins MacNeil (1866-1947)
Paul Manship (1885-1966)
Joseph Maxwell Miller (1877-1933)
John Mowbray-Clarke (1869-1953)
Josephine W. Newlin (?)
Allan Newman (1875-1940)
M. Devoe White Peden [Mrs.] (?)
Attilio Piccirilli (1868-1945)
Bela Lyon Pratt (1867-1917)
George DuPont Pratt (1869-1935)
Steven Augustus Rebeck (1891-1975)
Ulysses A Ricci (1888-1960)
Jules Edouard Roiné (1857-1916)
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907)
Hans Schuler (1874-1951)
Janet Scudder (1869-1940)
Theodore Spicer-Simson (1871-1959)
Jonathan M. Swanson (1888-1963)
Lorado Taft (1860-1936)
Fred Martin Torrey (1884-1967)
Adolph Weinman (1870-1952)
Julia Bracken Wendt (1871-1942)
Emil Robert Zettler (1878-1946)
Additional Artists
Trees Published in 1927
Mrs. Oakes Ames
Caroline Peddle Ball
Madeline A. Bartlett
Paul Bartlett
Edward Berge
Roger Nobel Burnham
Jules Leon Butensky
Gaetano Cecere
Rene Chambellan
Edwardo Conta
Joseph Coletti
Henri Crenier
Jorgen C. Dreyer
Antony de Francisci
Louisa Eyre
Robert Everhart
Sally James Farnam
Beatrice Fenton
Alexandra Finta
Edwin Frey
Harriett Frishmuth
Sherry Fry
Emil Fuchs
John Gregory
Beatrice Fox Griffith
Francis Grimes
Fredric V. Guinzburg
Charles Andrew Hafner
C.A. Hamann
John Hancock
Walter Hancock
Rachel M. Hawes
Leon Hermant
Frederic C. Hibbard
Charles Hinton
Malvina Hoffman
Victor S. Holm
Karl Hlava
Mrs. William Fetch Kelley
Josephine Kern
Henry Hudson Kitson
Isidore Konti
Gaston Lachaise
Anna Coleman Ladd
Albert Lasalle
Jack Lambert
Lee Lawrie
Arthur Lee
Alfred Lenz
George Lober
Frederick W. MacMonnies
Sue Watson Marshall
Joseph Martino
Herman Matzen
Harriett H. Mayor
Alfred Mewett
May Mott-Smith-Small
Mary Mowbray-Clarke
Joseph C. Motto
Eli Nadelman
Berthold Nebel
Josephine W. Nevins
Charles H. Niehaus
Violet Oakley
Sashka Paeff
Ernesto Bigni del Pratta
Ferrucio Piccirilli
Furio Piccirilli
Albin Polasek
Phinister Proctor
Brenda Putnam
Edmund T. Quinn
Frederick G. R. Roth
Charles Cary Rumsey
Antonio Salemme
Victor Salvatore
Anton Schaaf
Otto Scheizer
Ruth Sherwood
Emil Siebern
Walter A. Sinz
Karl F. Skoog
Ishmael Smith
Mrs. Lindsey M. Sterling
Eliza Talbott Taylor
Count Leo Tolstoy
Leilah Usher
Bessie Potter Vonnoh
Albert Weiner
Alice Morgan Wright
Enid Yandell
Albert C. Young
Mahonri M. Young
Marco Zim